


On a Darkling Plain

by jat_sapphire



Category: The Professionals
Genre: First Kiss, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-16
Updated: 2018-05-16
Packaged: 2019-05-07 22:14:13
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 650
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14680536
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jat_sapphire/pseuds/jat_sapphire
Summary: Stealing a minute after an op.





	On a Darkling Plain

The kind of day we'd had should be saved for ... well, for the planners and handlers of the terrorists we'd just taken out. Who were kids, mind you, kids who shouldn't've had anything worse than popguns, water pistols—instead they had Kalashnikovs. As opposed to making sandcastles, they were being pretty much shovelled into body bags. 

The one who did me in was a lanky kid of maybe thirteen, dark short hair and long dark eyelashes, and it doesn't take Dr Bloody Ross to know why. One of my bullets in him. I lost my tea sandwiches off to one side, just within the working lights for the med teams—considerate, me—and got out to some empty beach where nobody was looking on.

The moon was just past full, a little oblong, and there was wind from the sea but not much. It had been a warm day, and the gear-shift noises of the waves were regular if not soothing. Enough time went by that I knew I should have been getting back to the mopup—Christ, mop up!—when someone came up behind me.

It was Bodie, of course. He slung his arm round my shoulders and we just stood a bit, his breathing smooth and easy. Mine was rougher. I hate these stupid tears, but since they will come, all I can do is ride them out. 

He took a deeper breath, not really a sigh, and his arm slipped down to around my waist. 

"Must be a poem for a moon like this," I said.

Still, his voice was so normal that it took me till the rhyme to catch on. "... the world, which seems to lie before us, like a land of dreams, so various, so beautiful, so new..."

I shivered once, and knew it wasn't temperature. His arm tightened, and didn't relax until I did. He went on speaking someone else's words: "hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light, nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain, and we are here as on a darkling plain, swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight, where ignorant armies clash by night."

"That's exactly, precisely right," I said and put my hand on the one at my waist, understanding fully for the first time what made a young mercenary read poems, over and over, commit them to memory, haul them out for a night like this. "Say it again."

But this time, he began, "Ah, love, let us be true to one another! For the world, which seems to lie—" I turned in his arm, everything in me collapsing and then exploding like a nova "—before us like a land of dreams—" because both of us can turn on a dime but Bodie was really surprised "—so various, so beautiful—" and then I took the rest of those perfect lines into my mouth, my arm hooked round his neck and my triceps pressing the nape where I’d so often thought of kissing him. It seemed a safer thought when he was facing away. But just this second, I didn’t care for safety.

His mouth was ready to say the next words, then opening slackly, shocked, and then eating me up like Swiss roll and licking to catch any stray cream. I broke off to breathe a little and look in his eyes, which had an expression I’ve seen before but not often enough. Nice to have a moment to appreciate it when neither of us needs an ambulance. I gave him another quick kiss and tried to make myself let go. 

He said, “They’ll see us,” but didn’t seem inclined to step back either.

One more moment, and I took it to say, “You’re true. You keep me alive.” I didn’t mean just not-shot, and I could tell he understood.

Then we let go and went back to the shambles of the latest ignorant army.

**Author's Note:**

> Bodie quotes Matthew Arnold's "Dover Beach," which can be read at [ https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43588/dover-beach](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43588/dover-beach)


End file.
